The Importance Of Developing Global Leaders And The Human Resources Role In That Challenge
Few things are more important to an organization than having great leadership, as leaders make the difference in the organization’s success, sustainability, and impact on shareholders, customers, employees, and the community.
Opening Stories
Investment in leadership development is at a all time high. Here are three exam-ples of leadership development approaches.
Agilent Technologies
This manufacturer of instruments and equipment for life sciences, healthcare, and the chemical industry has introduced a leadership effectiveness analysis pro-gram, which has led to improvements across a number of key business outcomes. Introduced by incoming chief executive Bill Sullivan, the program has changed thestrategic intent of the company through leadership excellence and created a set of expectations for leaders to fulfill. The analysis takes the form of a leadership audit, with the questions adjusted over time to reflect not only changes in the business but also changes in leadership measurements. The results of the surveys are measured against external norms rather than against previous survey results.
Once scores for particular traits have reached a level that is considered top quartile and it is clear that a particular leader-ship quality has become embedded in the company, new questions are introduced. This leadership effectiveness analysis has enabled Agilent to develop different expectations of leaders at different levels, based on a “core” of expectations running all the way through the business. The analysis has become part of the DNA of the company and has a participation rate of 89 percent. The program was implemented from the C-suite downward in order to ensure that when leaders began participating in the program, their own managers were already fully supportive of it. The analysis provides Agilent’s twelve thousand employees with a reliable, consistent understanding of what leadership is and ensures that every business leader is following the same path. This has helped Agi-lent, which operates across many sites and has made a number of acquisitions in the past six years, ensure that its leadership is aligned across the company.
In addition to surveying its employees, Agilent also surveys its customers, and it has found that customers and employees give similar feedback, underlining the value of the program. It should come as no surprise that Agilent’s customer loyalty and customer satisfaction ratings are better than those of its best-in-class competitors. In addition, the program has helped to create a company-wide understanding of the direction of the company, as set out by the chief executive, and employee reten-tion is better than the market average. The program has also helped Agilent attract new talent, with acceptance rates now above 90 percent. . Ultimately, Agilent has seen a marked improvement in the leadership of the company, as the analysis has helped identify managers who are struggling to lead their teams effectively and the specific areas in which they are struggling. This has enabled HR to provide targeted support for these leaders, pairing them with mentors, teaching best practices, and working closely with them to improve their leadership skills.
PepsiCo
This food and beverage company based in New York is focusing heavily on leader-ship development programs to support its managers. While the company generally takes a top-down approach to training, the company found that new managers have a high risk of failure without the right support.
This led PepsiCo to begin its leadership program with individuals assuming a management role for the first time. The First Time Manager program was implemented because new managers ben-efit from greater support following their promotion. The program is a global one, and as the company works on a governance model, all the company’s sector chief HR officers were in favor of initiating the leadership transition suite of programs by first focusing on the transition from individual contributor to manager.
In addition, a global task force was set up to assist with the design of the program. It takes the form of a two-day residential course, followed by eighteen months of continuous learning, with participants undertaking regular tasks, readings, and so on to provide a combination of both active and passive learning. The course focuses on teaching newly promoted managers the value of the role of a manager and adapting to a “manager mindset,” and it provides guidance on how managers should adjust their time usage to ensure that they are properly delegating while at the same time building on the talent within their team. . PepsiCo has also introduced a Leaders of Managers program, as the second offering in its leadership-transition suite of programs, for the managers of manag-ers. . It covers a number of core skills, including business acumen, strategy, collabo-ration, talent management, and global mindset, and the course is a combination of leader-led learning and business simulation.
Consequently, SLDP was experiential in nature and offered creative, engaging activities for learners to explore and arrive at new meanings. Transfer of learning was built into the program, and each activity seamlessly linked to the next segment of learning. The program was delivered in three languages to meet the specific linguistic needs of each site. The evaluation study found that the SLDP favorably impacted several of IAM-GOLD’s key business measures, and a positive ROI of 46% was realized. Other intangible benefits not converted to monetary value included improving super-visory effectiveness, which ultimately impacted employee engagement. From a program perspective, this evaluation highlighted the importance of top-down lead-ership development. With all of this in mind, IAMGOLD is now pursuing the devel-opment of a Manager Leadership Development Program (MLDP). As the MLDP is implemented, pieces of SLDP will also be redesigned for use with the general employee population, ensuring effective sustainability of the program.
Global Leadership Is Crucial
In a world of strident shareholder demand, shifting business priorities, disrup-tive innovation, rapidly changing demographic and geopolitical forces, regulatory changes, and increasingly competitive business environments, leaders who envi-sion and execute today’s strategy as well as anticipate and prepare for tomorrow’s challenges are more critical than ever. Leaders are expected to demonstrate a deep understanding of their organization’s business as well as its products and services, master the nuances of global markets, and conduct themselves in ethical ways. They must respond quickly to competitive maneuvers, foster innovation, communicate a compelling vision, and develop not only their globally distrib-uted teams but also the next generation of leaders, all while delivering long-term value measured by short-term results. Becoming such a leader is like reaching the Mt. Everest of leadership development—and attainment is elusive. The results of failure to produce such leaders are often public, usually pronounced, and always profound. Yet strong leaders can be developed if organizations, business leaders, and those who head leadership development functions create the systems, processes, involve-ment, and accountability that are crucial to success. Some organizations seem to have reached the summit. Others struggle against the vertical climb. Still others remain unable to gain a foothold. It’s not going to get any easier.
Global Leadership Defined
What makes an effective, successful global leader? What does it take to be success-ful, and how is that success determined? Is the success to be evaluated quarterly and based on results delivered to the satisfaction of analysts and shareholders? Is it to be judged by results delivered during the tenure in the role, over the course of a lifetime of leadership, or ultimately by the future success of the company, business unit, or team after the leader has departed? What role does character play in this examination of business impact? What characteristics and competencies of a leader distinguish the “best” from the merely “very good”? As a core criterion, the expectation of leaders has always been to “get the job done” by managing assets and people in a complex global environment. Often miss-ing has been a more holistic view of the process in terms of how to motivate, engage, reward, and lead employees. Twentieth-century research began to crystallize the way effective organizational leaders are viewed and subsequently developed. Few depictions of effective leader-ship have withstood the test of time as well as that of Peter Drucker, who articulatedthe eight core practices of the effective leaders he worked with over his sixty-year career. According to Drucker, effective leaders do the following: Ask, “What needs to be done? ” Ask, “What is right for the enterprise? ” Develop action plans. Take responsibility for decisions. Take responsibility for communicating. Are focused on opportunities rather than on problems.
Run productive meetings. . Think and say “we” rather than “I. ”As he saw it, these questions “gave them the knowledge they needed helped them convert this knowledge into action [and] ensured that the whole organi-zation felt responsible and accountable. ”Jim Collins offered that in addition to IQ and technical skills, these five emo-tional intelligence attributes characterize the true leader: Self-awareness Self-regulation Motivation Empathy Social skill“Level 5 leaders,” as he described them, credit others with success yet assume personal responsibility for failure. These leaders are characterized by humility and a will to succeed that does not tolerate mediocrity; they are quietly and calmly determined to succeed. Over the years, we’ve seen the “one-minute manager” joined by the “situational leader” and the “servant leader” and by those leaders who are “values driven,” “prin-ciple centered,” and searching for “true north” or “multipliers. ” While definitions will undoubtedly continue to evolve, the fundamental description of a leader as one who delivers results in a way that affirms, engages, inspires, and respects others is unlikely to fade from view.
The Forces for Effective Global Leadership
Effective global leadership is critical to the success, and often the survival, of cor-porations. In recent years, we have witnessed the demise or serious crippling of companies because of the inability of leaders to competently and ethically lead, creating a breach of trust with the public as well as with employees. Newspaper headlines and, in some cases, high-profile trials remind us of the failures of leader-ship. They are not confined to a particular region or industry, as scandals surround-ing such companies as WorldCom, Satyam Computer Services, Adelphia, Parmalat, Tyco International, Clearstream, Enron, Global Crossing, and Arthur Anderson can attest. While most companies do not make the headlines for their leadership fail-ures, they are all accountable for business results.
